Contact centers may originate communications, such as voice calls, for various purposes. In the context of outbound calls, the communications handler processing the call may be, in various embodiments, a dialer, which originates voice calls. In one embodiment, the dialer may originate calls in anticipation of the call being answered, wherein the call is then connected to an available agent. Such dialers are known as “predictive dialers” as they attempt to predict when an agent is available and when a call that is placed will be answered by a live person and needs to be connected to an available agent. This avoids the agents from being connected to calls that are not answered, calls that encounter a busy signal, or are answered by an answering machine, etc.
Many contact centers employ a large number of agents. In various embodiments, there may be hundreds of available agents handling calls. Further, it is commonly the case that the predictive dialer will have to originate several calls before one call is answered by a live person and needs to be connected to an available agent. Thus, the predictive dialer may be originating a number of calls in rapid succession. These calls are received by a communication carrier, and processed to their indicated destination.
The contact center and the communications carrier will negotiate for a level of service related to processing calls as offered by the contact center. Typically, these agreements will stipulate service levels or metrics, such as a maximum number of calls that may be accepted or active at a given time. Such agreements are known as “service level agreements” or “SLAs.” The “Call Offering Rate” (“COR”) may be the service metric that defines the maximum rate of call offering. Other metrics may limit the number of active/pending calls. This allows the contact center to contract for a service level commensurate with its needs. By way of illustration only, an outbound contact center with a maximum of 100 agents may contract to with a carrier to allow three times (“3×”) the number of agents in call originations, leading to a maximum possible of 300 pending calls. Thus, it can be expected that the dialer equipment will be configured to originate and handle no more than 300 pending calls at any given time and likewise, the carrier will be expected to process up to 300 calls simultaneously. Obviously, if the dialer originated more than 300 pending calls at any given time, the carrier would likely not act upon the excess calls.
Further, the carrier may further limit the maximum number of calls that can be established with a time period. For example, the carrier may limit the total to 300 calls, but further limit the dialer to no more than 100 calls originating per second. Because the carrier is providing a service for a fee, providing a service level greater than what is contracted essentially means providing additional services for free. The dialer, if properly configured, would not cause such an over-dial situation to occur. Thus, if the carrier did not accept all such calls, or the rate at which calls are being offered by the dialer, the dialer should report the carrier's failure to process the additional calls as an error or breach of the SLA. It should be noted that the “over-dial” condition, by itself, does not necessarily mean that that the error lies with the carrier or the dialer. An over-dial condition can occur either if the dialer is configured to dial calls at a faster rate than the carrier has agreed to accept or if the carrier is unable to accept the rate of calls which it agreed to accept. In either situation, there is a mismatch in service expectations.
If the carrier is expected to process up to a certain number of calls within a time period (i.e., a particular COR), then the dialer should be able to detect and report if that service level is not met by the carrier. If the SLA is contracted to meet a particular service level, and the carrier is not meeting that level, then the contact center may be paying a premium for services that are, in fact, not being provided. As can be expected, the contact center operator does not want to pay for carrier services not received and conversely the carrier does not want to provide services that are not being paid for.
However, many existing dialer systems may not detect, let alone report, when a carrier is not processing calls at an expected service level. Furthermore, adapting to such a situation in a contact center frequently requires manual intervention. For example, an administrator could adjust parameters in the dialer to define a new limit on the maximum number of calls, or the maximum call offering rate. Such manual intervention may require suspending call processing, which can have adverse economic effects since the agents may be idled and unable to handle calls during this time. However, without adapting the dialer to a degradation in service level, then the dialer may attempt to dial numbers, and considered these as processed, but for which corresponding calls are not launched to their destination. There are other adverse impacts that can occur when the dialer originates call attempts to a telephone number, but the carrier does not process the call as expected.
Therefore, what is needed is a better method of detecting in a dialer when a carrier is not processing calls in accordance with service level expectations, and providing an automated mechanism in the dialer to detect such occurrences and adapt accordingly without manual intervention. Further, the dialer should provide suitable notification and information about such occurrences so that such issues can be addressed by supervisory personnel. These and other considerations are the focus of the technologies and concepts presented herein to address efficient management of a dialer's pacing methods in light of changes in a carrier's ability to process calls.